As we noted last year, the settled science says that a terrible El Niño is coming and although it’s not climate-related, it is. Then again Phys.org profiles a Geophysical Research Letters study under the headline “Super El Niños may lose their punch in a warming world”. So some computer models say a warmer world sees less extreme impacts from the ENSO. Meanwhile an item in The Silicon Review warns “Extreme Heat Wave Drives Record Global Fires as El Niño Looms, Scientists Warn”, so essentially the exact opposite, thus covering all bases. And for good measure the scientists who warn are, of all people, World Weather Attribution, who claim “record-breaking global fire outbreaks” are happening in a world in which, actually, wildfires have declined fairly steadily for centuries.
At least the piece says it was WWA. But the link does not take you to any such claim on their part, just to the main WWA site, and our own spelunking found no such numbers there. Mind you Our World in Data says 2026 was thus far the lowest wildfire year in a decade as part of a declining trend. But on climate you can say just anything.
Including The Silicon Review and WWA speculating wildly about El Niño as if advancing solid evidence:
“‘If there is a strong El Niño later this year, there is a serious risk that the effect of climate change and El Niño ... will result in unprecedented weather extremes,’ warned Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-founder of World Weather Attribution.”
And if not, nobody will take any of it back including:
“As extreme heat wave conditions drive record global fire outbreaks and El Niño threatens to amplify the crisis, The Silicon Review examines how climate change has pushed our planet into uncharted territory and what governments must do to prepare for an unprecedented summer of fire.”
Even the last bit probably won’t happen, and if not they won’t say sorry.
And another thing. An item passed on by MSN, though that link has expired, included:
“Warm Water Showed Up in Three Places at Once/ Near Indonesia. Off Central America. Along South America. All at the same time in early 2026. That combination has not been recorded at this intensity in over forty years and past extreme events never had this shape.”
Never? Never in 250 million years? Of course the author doesn’t know any such thing and doesn’t pretend to. They just use “never” to mean quite recently and assume there was no past. Which is an odd way to cover science or indeed any other subject.
As is yet another New York Times El Niño panic puff piece that shrills:
“A Powerful El Niño Is Forming. If History Is a Guide, It Could Hit Hard. The biggest episodes of the past have altered the course of human events, according to researchers. An emerging one is drawing historic comparisons.”
So history is a guide though it’s not, and says El Niños were always bad so this one maybe being bad is proof of unprecedented change, say the researchers who say:
“Some academics even claim to see the fingerprints of El Niño on political and economic crises in ancient Egypt, or on the downfall of the Moche civilization in present-day Peru, more than 1,000 years ago. And in 1877 and 1878, a famine fueled by El Niño killed millions of people across the tropics, hardening inequities that, as one research paper put it, ‘would later be characterized as the “first world” and “third world.”‘“
Yeah yeah. World ends, women and minorities hardest hit. But if you admit that El Niños hammered ancient Egypt, you can’t really point to one in 2026 causing trouble and holler Gotcha. Except they can, and will. Even if it doesn’t happen.
Thus the New York Times has its El Niño weather catastrophe and eats it too with “NOAA Officially Declares El Niño Is Here and Flashing Danger Signs/ The global weather pattern threatens to worsen floods and heat waves already intensifying due to climate change. But it may also mean fewer hurricanes.” Unless it doesn’t. QED.
